Wireless and, more specifically, mobile communications, are becoming more prevalent in all aspects of everyone's daily lives. A primary example of wireless or mobile communications are the expanding cellular networks that are used by cell phones and other wireless paging and email communications devices. Such devices use SMS (“short message service”), MMS (“multimedia messaging service”), SMIL (“synchronized multimedia integration language”) as well as other developing technologies, services and languages to send and receive text, images, audio, video and other media.
Business dealings and personal events are each day affected by the expanding capabilities of wireless, mobile communications. Cell phones, for example, are used today to transmit and receive various types of information and data that simply could not be accomplished several years ago. In particular, while ten years ago, it was largely unheard of that one could obtain a good Internet connection through a cell phone, today, such web based connections are not uncommon. Indeed, movies, commercials, and videos are easily streamed to an end-user's cell phone using SMIL and MMS technologies. Moreover, text messaging and other media transmission and reception via wireless communications devices are becoming the means of communication no matter where the sender or recipient of the communication are located.
In view of the fact that wireless communication devices and wireless communication signals are becoming more robust and are consistently having a much wider, and useable, signal geographic footprint, and because such devices, including cell phones, pagers, and Blackberry™ type devices, tend to be easily carried by a growing number of users, such wireless communications devices are an attractive means of providing information to recipients no matter where the user is located, or whether he or she is connected to a land-line, or to a computer terminal and the Internet.
The use of the expanding capabilities of wireless and mobile communications, including cellular media, provides a new and exciting platform for directed and focused marketing and advertising. Such wireless and mobile communications technology may also be useful for information distribution, general reminders and/or specific alert notifications directed to individuals or to a previously selected, and defined group of mobile communications device users.
Within the advertising and marketing world, the commercializing and marketing of one's products and services is becoming more difficult. Consumers are intelligent and discriminating, especially when it comes to advertising and marketing materials. Advertising campaigns or marketing projects that indiscriminately reach both targeted as well as not targeted consumers/individuals are an inefficient use of a company's marketing budget.
In order to improve the use of one's marketing dollars, a marketing program should ideally be targeted to the audience most likely to respond positively to the advertising message. Moreover and ideally the program should be able to be readily modified based upon results obtained from the marketing effort. The question that should always be posed regarding a marketing or advertising program is whether the advertising and marketing is actually bringing in the identified consumers/customers? That is, is the program effective, either as intended and planned, or in some other way. If the program is not effective, i.e., it is not working, then the program should be modified, revised or simply stopped.
While the use of wireless and mobile communications devices, e.g., cell phones, satellite phones, pagers, and Blackberry™ type devices, to transmit and receive information is expanding, the use of such wireless and mobile communications technology to target advertising and/or to direct information, while providing a means for the mobile communications device users to offset a portion of their communication device service bills, has not been seriously explored. Moreover, the use of such technologies to provide targeted and personalized advertising based upon information from subscribing end users, who provide general demographic information and specific interest information, has not been effectively achieved.
Methods and systems relating to directed advertising or providing warning alert information have been developed. None however has achieved any recognizable level of acceptance or utility. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,128,050, issued to Ballard, teaches methods and systems for matching advertisements and target consumers by using filter programs installed on the consumers/end users' computers. The methods and systems disclosed by Ballard do not lend themselves to use with a wireless, mobile communications or cellular network, or cell phones, in part because the filter programs are specific to each end user and are installed on each end users' computer. Such methods and systems are inherently limited by the capability of the end user device, including the particular separate programming needed at the end user device.
Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 6,385,592, issued to Angles et al., describes a system and method for delivering customized electronic advertisements in an interactive communication system. The Angles et al. system interconnects in an on-line fashion, the computers of an advertisement provider, a content provider, and a consumer. Upon the request of a consumer for current offerings, the advertisement provider computer generates a custom advertisement based upon the consumer's profile. Although the Angles et al. system and method teach a means of creating a customized advertisement for each specific consumer, the system is limited to initiation or a request by the consumer, and does not appear to be applicable to wireless and mobile communication devices.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,856,673, issued to Banks et al., discloses a system and method for providing targeted advertising to telephone callers in mid-dial. According to the Banks et al. invention, upon entry of a partial telephone number, the system and method determines, based upon whether appropriate conditions are met, whether an advertisement should be presented to the caller prior to completing the dialing process. The Banks et al. system and method selects advertisements to transmit to the telephone user based upon the user's entry of a partial telephone number and prior to the completion of the user's dialing. Although the Banks et al. system and method disclose use of an advertising profile database and caller profile database to determine whether to interrupt the caller's dialing, the system and method do not teach any means of transmitting particular advertising to the telephone caller without the caller first initiating a telephone call.
Within the context of warning alert notifications, U.S. Pat. No. 6,509,833, issued to Tate, provides a disclosure for a method and system providing a warning alert to subscribers of a telecommunications system. In a primary aspect, the Tate invention is a telecommunications based warning distribution system comprising a central switch having an internal controller, a subscriber data base, and a remote switch. The central and remote switches are each coupled to a different plurality of subscribers' communications devices. Upon the notification by an emergency warning provider, a warning alert is generated for and transmitted to all subscribers within the subscriber data base where certain characteristics of the subscribers are satisfied. Such characteristics include the global positioning system determined geographic locations of the communications devices. Neither the method nor system disclosed in Tate describe a separate organizing entity that is capable of matching particular information from an information provider with an end-user's request for that particular information. The Tate method and system in a relative indiscriminant fashion sends warning alerts to all end-users within the communications reach of the central switch.
Accordingly, there does not appear to be any known prior art methods, systems, or patents, that disclose or address the potential advantages of using wireless or mobile communications technology, such as cellular technology, to direct advertising or information from subscribing advertisers or information providers, to subscribing mobile communications device users in return for the subscribing end-users receiving a fee for each advertisement or notice received by the subscribing wireless communications end user. Moreover, there does not appear to be a method or system whereby the subscribing wireless communications end user provides general demographic information and/or specific interest information to an entity to allow for targeting of marketing advertisements, and targeting of desired information.
Such a method and system would be highly desirable for advertisers (to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of advertising budgets), for information providers (to quickly provide information, notices or warnings to a target audience requesting such information), and to mobile communication device users (to provide an economic reimbursement and offset for the mobile device usage, while also providing information having a high potential of relevancy and interest to the mobile device user). Such an innovative method and system has not been seen or achieved in the relevant art. The following describes such a method and system.